Part of the Yiddish Book Center's Online Lecture Series

I. L. Peretz: Classic and Contemporary is a downloadable lecture series by Professor Emerita Ruth Wisse of Harvard University and Professor Justin Cammy of Smith College.

A century after his death in 1915, I. L. Peretz remains one of the modern Jewish writers to whom we continually return—not out of a sense of duty to the past, but because of what his work tells us about ourselves. This course explores some of Peretz's liveliest writing as well as the context and milieu in which he wrote.

Introduction

Lecture 1 – Peretz on Good and Evil (Ruth Wisse)

The pursuit of justice was increasingly complicated for Jews in Poland during Peretz’s lifetime. Thoroughly educated in classical Jewish sources as well as in modern law, Peretz was deeply concerned with questions of morality and justice. His fiction asks: what do “good” and “evil” mean when society has dispensed with the usual definitions?

Q&A 1

Lecture 2 – Peretz as Storyteller (Justin Cammy)

Explores motifs of storytelling in some of Peretz's most beloved prose works.

Q&A 2

Lecture 3 – What did Peretz Achieve? (Ruth Wisse and Justin Cammy)

Looks at key phases in Peretz’s literary career, from his work in social criticism to his contributions to modernism, and ask: are such academic distinctions helpful in understanding this complex writer?

Q&A 3

Lecture 4 – Peretz as Dramatist (Justin Cammy)

Though Peretz is best known as a writer of short stories and essays, he also devoted himself to playwriting, experimenting with how the theater could stage Jewishness at a moment of cultural anxiety and transition. Our discussion will focus on his neo-Hasidic drama "Di goldene keyt (The Golden Chain)" and the modernist play "Bay nakht afn altn mark (A Night at the Old Marketplace)."

Q & A 4

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